دیدگاه های تاریخی در مورد توفان ها و کولاک های گرمسیری در سیستم اقتصادی - اجتماعی و طبیعی نم دین (ویتنام)

This contribution starts with a brief introduction of the effects of typhoons and tropical storms on Vietnam, focusing in particular on the coastal region of Nam Dinh, a province in the northern part of the country and part of the Red River Delta. The magnitude of damage caused by a natural disaster is not solely determined by the direct physical impact of the event, but also depends on the socio-economic and political circumstances that shape a person or a groups’ daily life. Such conditions define where and how people live and work. An overview of the major events since the 19th century shows how important it is to study these events in historical perspective. This paper briefly considers various conceptualizations and definitions of vulnerability. It analyses the destruction caused by a natural disaster in terms of peoples’ vulnerability in a deltaic region. A distinction is made between collective vulnerability and individual vulnerability, each leading to different levels of perception of the disaster. The levels overlap in the discussion because they are interwoven and dependent on one another.

This paper examines the relationships between storm events and human life in colonial and post-colonial Vietnam at various levels of historical time. I will argue that historical data from documents and oral reports supplement the limited instrumental measurements of meteorological phenomena of the French colonial period and even the more elaborated data of the post-1945 period. The extent of the consequences of natural hazards as typhoons is not only measured by quantitative or statistical data but also by information received from contemporaries, ego documents and documents stored in archives. I will further argue that the dimension of a disaster is influenced by the measure of vulnerability and resilience of the society that is struck by a natural hazard. In other words “(H)azards may be physical phenomena but disasters occur as a result of a community’s political structure, economic system and social order that expose its people to the dangers inherent in (…) climatic disturbances” (Bankoff, 2003a). The destruction caused by a disaster in terms of peoples’ vulnerability is further analytically separated into two levels, collective vulnerability and individual vulnerability. Several factors that influence vulnerability will be considered throughout the discussion at both levels. The levels overlap in the discussion because they are interwoven and dependent on one another.

Historical records can reveal important information, which is not available through existing secondary data, collected in aggregate data sets about tropical storms and typhoons. In most cases the human consequences of the inflicted damage is seldom mentioned, which puts these data in a different perspective. The way natural hazards are perceived and remembered by local populations depends on the measure of the damage inflicted, and the level it is received. Vulnerability is a term with many meanings, but expresses a key variable of poverty, which is related to many other factors (see Kelly et al., 2000). By showing an interest in historical developments, I have tried to illustrate that a long-term perspective is needed to understand the particular opportunities for intervention not only in physical, but also in social terms. Existing data partly suggest an increase in occurrence and intensity of typhoons in the Western part of the Pacific, especially the ones that hit Vietnam. There is no clear explanation for it, though; some scholars regard the ENSO-phenomenon as one of the main factors. Assertions that the number of tropical storms and typhoons per year will increase are still difficult to substantiate. Specific climate change predictions at local scales where ecosystems are actually affected are needed to add a greater fidelity to calculated local typhoon impacts. Major concerted efforts will be required to reduce these uncertainties substantially (see, e.g., Manton, 2001). From our data, there is no clear evidence that the increase in number and intensity of typhoons also leads to an increase in vulnerability or higher risks for the system. With the transformation of the economic and environmental system, new measures are taken. The dense population and intensive agriculture have, however, made natural hazards an intrinsic risk for social vulnerability, which we have not only defined in individual and social terms, but also historically contextualized.